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Science Market Update

Since its emergence in the 1980's, HIV/AIDS has been a prominent point of research for life scientists around the world. With no current cure or vaccine available, scientists receive substantial amounts of funding to study this virus to gain a better understanding of it as well as to produce a vaccine that will combat the virus better than current treatments do, which can only slow and control the virus, but not cure it.

The Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics provides annual funding to researchers at the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, and the state of Minnesota dedicated to bioscience research. Since its founding in 2003, the Minnesota Partnership has worked to strengthen Minnesota's bioresearch fields and help elevate the state as a respected research center. (Image courtesy of Bsstu via Wikimedia Commons).

The Mayo Clinic is one of the most well-known research and treatment centers in the world. With facilities in Arizona, Minnesota, and Florida, the Mayo Clinic receives millions of dollars in funding each year, performs cutting edge research and clinical trials, and sees more than one million patients each year.

The classical approach of differentiating forms of cancer purely by their location in the body is losing popularity in the field of oncology. Rather, the prevailing ideology is that every cancer is different and that you really need to look at the molecular and genetic makeup of a tumor in order to plan the best method of attack. With this in mind, researchers and physicians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester have developed a 50-gene cancer panel test that allows for finely tuned, individualized cancer treatment.

Around 20 percent of the United States suffers from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a disorder that causes several uncomfortable symptoms centered on the large intestine. As of yet, there is no treatment for IBS itself, just methods to alleviate the symptoms. However, new and conclusive evidence from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota points to a gene responsible for IBS in some patients.

When we jump into the swimming pool for some last-minute summer revelry, the worst part of getting out is the feeling of residual chlorine on our bodies. The environment doesn’t respond well to chlorine either- several synthetic chlorine-based compounds are toxic when released into nature and have taken part in the development of numerous superfund sites. Fortunately, a team from the University of Minnesota’s BioTechnology Institute is working on a way to clean up this chlorine, with help from some hungry bacteria.

In a recent press release, the Mayo Clinic revealed its goal of making its Rochester, Minnesota campus a destination medical center. The Mayo Clinic will invest over $3 billion of healthcare funding in Minnesota, making this not only the state’s largest economic development plan, but one of the largest in the country. An additional $2.1 billion in private investments will also fund the project, which includes investing $3.5 billion in the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus over the next twenty years.